Ch.1- Hiding Solves Everything
The sun was shining with the quiet sheen of perfection. Though the forest was cold, murky, and not the best place to be tenting in, the runaways had nowhere else to go. It was the middle of autumn so the trees had lost their leaves and the animals were no longer in hibernation. The ground was muddy from the humidity and last night's large storm.
From the campsite the runaways could see the place they once called home and they all could hear the bell ringing for what would be their first class of the morning. It was a wise idea not to run to far but it wasn't a wise idea to run to a place filled with creatures that could most likely kill them with a blink of an eye.
It would have been easier if one of the runaways had remembered to bring their wands or told the red headed one that electric wands do not get charged when surrounded by trees and spiders. Life is much harder when one is forced to use the equipment used at the younger stage of them lives.
Just recently the headmaster of the school, Professor McGonagall, made a wise decision to update the outdated school of Hogwarts. After the death of Albus Dumbledore, she was forced to act quickly to ensure the safety of the students at the school, especially one particularly important student who was the quarry of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. So, she got the help of the Metal and Electrical Wand Corporation, who made wands from Muggle technology. These wands increased the power of the spells tenfold.
As if using Muggle merchandise wasn't bad enough for the school's reputation as being a high standing educator, someone was causing massive fires within the building. Children within the school were starting to gain behaviors and odd powers without the use of a wand or spell. The children however would run away from Hogwarts before someone in the building could examine them.
It was rumored that the Unnamed Man had something to do with the odd makings of the students but he was no where near the school at the time of the beginning. So the students who were affected stayed in the forest at night, though pretended to be normal students in the light. The effects of some changed their appearance but, for others, it did not affect them until night came along.
The runaways sleep out in the forest for that night, but they had overslept for the first class. The few that had their figures altered never came out of the forest, relying on their similarly mutated friends to bring food out to them. One by one, however, each student would either go missing or only found be during the day; the effects took days to recover but it would be an epidemic soon enough when everyone was in the forest.
The forest had hidden students from first though seven years, all scared about what might happen to them if exposed by one of the teachers. The teachers weren't stupid they did know the students were disappearing but they just couldn't stop to look for them. But the hunt was on when a fire was lit to the entrance to the school.
Only one teacher knew were all of the students were for he, himself, was getting affected by the odd illness. Hagrid just couldn't hide in the forest like the others; he had to keep on working. Even though the illness affected him by giving his face a weird type of purple acne, it was his job to ignore it; a little cover up always fixed him up anyways.
Hagrid kept his word and the rest of the runaways had to trust his word when it came to their safety and responsibility not to be treated like lab rats. The illness had turned some students into large monsters when others could just breath in hydrogen instead of oxygen; not many were found after a day or two with that change.
Others of the bunch grew fangs and some had the embarrassment of waking up covered head to toe in fur or warts. One of the students could create objects with his mind when others could move a finger to summon a bag of bread or yams. While some feared their powers, other students were enjoying their new powers that made them create fireworks with a blink or to fly without a broom.
It just had to be a matter of time before someone attacked someone else, thinking that they were superior. Like the time when a fight broke out between a boy with powers of cheese whiz and the one who could make pudding come out of his nose. The questions were who caused this, would the children see safety, and were the fires related to the illness?
But now, the students were more worried about getting to class on time than their weird powers. While the students in the tents hurried to get dressed to make it to first period, others were shaving off the fur growing on their faces. The leader of the runaways wasn't decided, but most of the students followed the one who could suddenly read minds; which really wasn't a good leadership attribute. But none of the students were worrying about that as they bathed in the lake and hurried to get ready for class.
Three students just decided to skip class that day because one of the students had grown an eye on his forehead. That student was transforming into some sort of half spider half man. The two others weren't better off than the red-headed spider boy. The boy with the scar had found out he had the ability to read others' thoughts and to move objects with his mind. The girl was disappointed with the fact she was only given the power to go invisible and to walk through walls.
Together, the three held hands, hoping not to be killed by what was happening to them and the others. But time passed without magic, for their new wands had to be charged inside, and the affects of what was called the "Creature Creation" caused the students to hide from their ability to stop what was happening in the school. The person who was starting the fires had to be up to something and it wasn't just a wink dink situation that a third of the student body went missing at night, forced to sleep out in the cold due to their fear of what they would do to their fellows.
"Harry, are you positive I am going to be a Spider Boy? Oh, I do hate spiders Harry, I do hate them," whined the red headed boy. Harry, the boy with the scar, nodded.
"Ron, yes you are going to be a spider and , yes, maybe, just maybe, the sky will fall on us all to kill the illness before it spreads to all the others," said Harry, talking to Ron while and reading Hermione's, the girl, thoughts, which, to Harry's great disgust, were focused on Draco Malfoy. What truly scared him was the fact that the thoughts were not, as he would have hoped, focused on the killing of Malfoy; they were more romantically inclined.
Harry started to gulp with how Hermione looked at Malfoy; the murderer of all hopes and dreams. It was clear to him Hermione was just sick from all of the changes and all, or at least he thought that was the matter. The thoughts, though, might have occurred because of everyone's love lives falling to the ground because of Malfoy.
Over the summer Hermione lost contact with Viktor Krum and Harry dumped Ginny Weasley, Ron's sister, because of getting hunted by Unnamed Man. Ron however had only dated a girl for a good impression on Hermione; sadly the girl dumped him after he coughed in her mouth. And, to tie Malfoy in, he wanted a girlfriend worthy of his so called…charm.
Harry pushed his mind out of Hermione's thoughts of Malfoy reading one of her favorite books with her hand in his. He started to wonder how on earth this magical creation of creature happened to him and his friends while Malfoy was skipping around campus.
He looked over at Ron to take a peek at what "Spider Boy" had to think about at the moment. Harry took his thoughts out of the boy's head because Ron was just thinking about a slice of cake; just one big plain slice of cake. Harry always thought Ron was kind of slow in the head and now he had proof.
It was about lunch time and the rest of the forest was almost clear except for the monsters and the gang. Hermione, Harry, and Ron were watching the courtyard from the large rock they were all sitting on. It was sunny out and the clouds were no longer gray from the storm. The bell had rung and the group just watched the kids pile out of the doors to the dining hall. Many of the students took the courtyard path inside as a quicker route.
"I am so hungry, I could eat a whole turkey without even looking to see if its head is chopped off…or I could start eating flies cause after all I am a sp..sp..spi..spid..er..I am a spider, cruel world it is indeed," said Ron with a sigh. Ron, hearing his stomach growl with pain, groaned. Harry wasn't going to let his friend go hungry or watch him eat an insect either.
Harry was able to move objects with his mind to bring his friends and himself a ham sandwich by opening a window and teleporting it to the forest. They ate with hunger wondering if anyone would notice they had skipped class for the whole day.
Suddenly, someone was coming through the bushes of the courtyard. Harry recognized him as a young boy who was a horrible creature. Yes, the creature was ugly, disgusting, and yet Ron was crawling a hole in his pants just looking at him. He was backed up by two monsters not as vigorous as he was. The creature had to be one person….Malfoy.
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